Test
Posted by Lyn on March 20, 2009 under Uncategorized | 
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Testing WP 2.7.
Harry Potter Mania
Posted by Kristie on February 6, 2008 under Uncategorized | Be the First to Comment
I’m a regular on the Craftster forum, and I’ve been watching (but not participating in) a Harry Potter quilt block swap.
You can see all the blocks that have been swapped in this gallery. I don’t do this kind of quilting at all, so it’s been interesting to me to see how people have put these together. This HP block, which I’m assuming is paper pieced, is my favorite, but there is plenty of fun eye candy and creativity to enjoy.
Workbasket
Posted by Kristie on January 31, 2008 under Uncategorized | Be the First to Comment
For a very short time (perhaps a year or two) in the early 90s I subscribed to Workbasket magazine. At the time the only handcrafts I knew were crochet and embroidery, and I liked that Workbasket had patterns for both, in addition to knitting and quilting. I also liked the small size of the magazine and its old fashioned look-and-feel. Subscribing to it made me feel crafty. However, I didn’t have any time to be crafty, so I discontinued my subscription, thinking I could just keep the ones I had and use the patterns in them as I had the time.
I always enjoyed looking at the quilt patterns in the magazine, but I never made any of them. I just ran across this History of Workbasket magazine, which includes a fun biography of the author. Workbasket ceased publication in 1995, leaving many crafters, including the author, bereft of their favorite magazine.
Sadly, my tiny stash of Workbaskets got lost or thrown away or given away in one of my many moves. I wish I still had them. I always look for them in used bookstores, but they are in high demand and are becoming increasingly difficult to find. There’s been one published book of the Workbasket state quilts, but to my knowledge, there are no collections of any other patterns from the magazine. I’d sure like to see one!
Just a Guilty Nudge to Self
Posted by Lyn on January 30, 2008 under Uncategorized | Read the First Comment
I am not making good progress on that quilt. Need to sit myself down there and get to it! So this is just a guilty nudge to myself to do that.
I don’t remember if I mentioned it here or not, but I recently subscribed to a feed of quilting pictures at flickr which is fun to browse for inspiration and to see what people are working on. If I were making any progress on anything, I’d be posting pictures there myself! Argh!
Update on Project
Posted by Lyn on January 7, 2008 under Uncategorized | Be the First to Comment
I’ve got all the blocks (25 of them) finished for my latest project and will try to get the top pieced together tonight. They’re fairly simple blocks so I won’t need to do a lot of seam matching and it should go together fairly quickly. Then I need to find some new backing fabric — I don’t actually have many big pieces left — or piece a bunch of random stuff together to use as a backing, and get the thing finished up! Pictures to come soon.
I came across this neat site the other day: The Quilt of Belonging.
The Quilt of Belonging is a stunning textile art project that shows there is a place for all in the fabric of society.
There are a bunch of pictures. It’s pretty neat.
Next Quilt
Posted by Lyn on October 30, 2007 under Uncategorized | Be the First to Comment
Ok, I’m pretty sure my next quilt is going to be a fairly simple attic windows style quilt. The only hard part will be the set-in seams, but since I’ll be making 25 ‘window’ blocks or so, I should get some good practice out of it. I think I’m going to make it out of mostly Jinny Beyer fabrics, too. Will try to make a trip to the JB store this weekend to pick up a few more.
Something interesting
Posted by Kristie on August 1, 2007 under Uncategorized | Be the First to Comment
I am a fan of Posie Gets Cozy and read it frequently, but today I noticed something very interesting in the pictures. I know she is making an apron out of all that gorgeous stuff, but wouldn’t that be an interesting way to make a quilt?
In other news — work on my massive quilting bee is progressing slowly. I’m still organizing people and resources. It’s quite a lot of work!
Overwhelmed
Posted by Kristie on July 26, 2007 under Uncategorized | Read the First Comment
I haven’t been sewing much lately — instead, I’ve been doing a lot of paper crafting. But I think about sewing a lot and I miss it, and it seems that suddenly I will be into it again in a big way.
My church owns a house that it rents to low-income families. It’s not currently occupied, and it’s completely empty — it doesn’t have a single piece of furniture in it. The church is going to rent it out to a family of 9 with a tragic history. The father was a political prisoner in Liberia, but managed to escape, only without his family. He hasn’t seen them in several years, but finally managed to get visas for them all to join him in the U.S. So the house is in immediate need of furnishing.
This is where sewing comes in.
I volunteered to organize a quilting bee to make 8 quilts for the house. People seem enthusiastic about the project — so far I have a team of 3 people working on it, and I only thought of the idea 36 hours ago. I just hope that enough people are interested to make it fun! I’m excited about the project because it is useful and because it is time I did some sewing again.
I Pity the Fool
Posted by Kristie on June 22, 2006 under Uncategorized | Comments are off for this article
Remember The A-Team? My family used to gather around the TV to watch that show together — we all loved it. I would like to embroider the van from that show, and the show’s logo, onto something (I’m being intentionally vague — I can’t give away the specifics of this project right now, because it is a gift. But don’t worry. I’ll post the results here if I complete this project.). So I need a good line drawing of that van — and the best such drawings always come from coloring books. If you have an A-Team coloring book that you’d be willing to give or sell to me, please drop me an e-mail message. Thanks!
Update: I won a Mr. T coloring book on e-bay that is making it’s way to me now. I’m very excited about this project!
Not sewing, but
Posted by Kristie on June 3, 2005 under Uncategorized | Comments are off for this article
I’ve not been sewing lately — in fact, my machine hasn’t come out of it’s case all year — however, I have a few projects lined up for this weekend: some mending and a few crochet hook rolls. Nothing stressful, nothing big.
I found this free quilt pattern in my wanderings about the web and I wanted to share it: Ginger Bliss. I really love the way the rectangles are offset, and the incredible combination of fabrics!
Surfacing
Posted by Kristie on January 18, 2005 under Uncategorized | 4 Comments to Read
I’m slowly working my way out of my moving morass. We’ve moved into a townhouse, which is laid out very differently from any place I’ve ever lived before — I’ve never in my life lived anywhere with stairs, and the stairs imply a particular arrangement of rooms and space, one that feels quite unknown to me.
I just this past weekend started unpacking my craft stuff. I plan to buy furniture to set up my crafty space — I’m hoping I can do that this weekend. I need to start (and finish) an unbaby baby quilt for a good friend of mine — her due date is early in March, so I’d better get cracking! I call it “unbaby” because it doesn’t look at all like a baby quilt — I chose colors my friend liked, none of which are babyish. She is from a culture that doesn’t color-code kids, so I felt very free in designing this quilt. I’ll post pictures of the fabric just as soon as I figure out what box it is in.
Entwined Border
Posted by Lyn on September 14, 2004 under Uncategorized | 3 Comments to Read
Scroll down this page to the picture labelled “Entwined Border.” I think I want to do a border like that for the next baby quilt I make, just for fun. Although, the border might end up overpowering the quilt. Hmm. I’ll have to do some EQ’ing or, the horror, actual sketching, to see what size HST would work best.
JB Holiday FQs
Posted by Lyn on September 13, 2004 under Uncategorized | Comments are off for this article
For fun, I recently got a Jinny Beyer holiday fat quarter pack. I’m thinking I might do a stack-and-slash Christmas quilt for us out of these as my next project. It will be super easy (in theory), will produce something that I’ll keep, and will give me a break from the more challenging (to me) stuff for awhile. I may or may not leave the purple fabric in this sequence, and I may (or may not) add another fabric or two. There are 10 fat quarters here - I may add a couple of others so that I end up making a 3 block by 4 block quilt in the end.
Stack and Slash
Posted by Lyn on September 5, 2004 under Uncategorized | Comments are off for this article
Katxena pointed me to this very cool technique for making a crazy quilt called Stack-and-Slash. I think it’s excellent! No idea when I’ll get to a point where I can try it, since I’ve got so many quilts lined up that I want to do, but I think it would be a lot of fun.
Fixed That Block
Posted by Lyn on September 1, 2004 under Uncategorized | 2 Comments to Read
Well, I fixed that block that frustrated me so the other night. Basically, the middle three patches, as seen in the pile on the left in the picture below, were rotated 90 degrees from where they should have been. The corrected block is on the right. It’s not perfect, but it’ll do. It was good practice with set-in seams. I think it would be much easier to do those kinds of corrections if I knew how to sew by hand. Oh well, I’m machine-bound, so I make do.
Chain piecing is going to make this quilt go together very quickly. I’m excited about it, but too worn out after weights at the gym tonight to work on it now. Maybe tomorrow or Friday I can get a couple more layers done on these 15 blocks.
It’s funny, I really am partial to big, bold colors and patterns that make for dramatic quilts. Ah well, everyone’s gotta’ have a style of some sort or another, I guess.